


you and me and the puppy makes three

by TheJGatsby



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Dogs, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-02
Updated: 2015-12-02
Packaged: 2018-05-04 12:38:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5334389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheJGatsby/pseuds/TheJGatsby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bellamy's dog isn't a terrible wing-man, all told.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you and me and the puppy makes three

**Author's Note:**

> why am I such a sucker for writing random things ppl post on tumblr. why do i keep doing this. inspired by [ this post ](http://apanoplyoffic.tumblr.com/post/134370992427/current-thoughts-bellamy-dressing-their-dog-up)

 

Bellamy will forever stand by the fact that he was _conned_ into getting a dog. He still loves Argos, of course, because he’s the happiest fucking dog in the world and even Bellamy’s general grumpiness only lasted about eight seconds when the tiny puppy looked up at him with his big sad eyes on his disproportionately tiny body.

It was his sister who dragged him with her when she wanted to get a dog, ostensibly to guard her in her first real solo apartment, but in reality more to keep her company and go for long early-morning runs no human could ever be as excited about as O and her dog get. Bellamy didn’t really want to go look at puppies, he’d fully intended to spend the whole day in his pajamas, but he ended up going and looking at puppies and taking home the runt of the litter, because _of course_ Bellamy would grab the runt of the litter. Cute things that need to be loved are Bellamy’s greatest weakness.

So that’s how Bellamy ended up with the gangly adolescent dog he has about a year later. Argos is all energy and love, like a dog should be, and it’s kind of awesome, especially at the end of a rough day, because Argos is the pure embodiment of joy. Other times it’s not as awesome. Like now, when Argos has gone tearing off into the park and forced Bellamy to sprint after him, shouting like an idiot.

When he finally finds his dog, he’s sitting in the lap of an incredibly pretty blond girl, tail wagging so fast it’s almost a blur, looking like he’s never been so happy in his short doggy life as he is to be there, right now, being petted and cooed over by her. Bellamy slows to a walk, trying to control his breathing so he doesn’t seem as winded as he is, and approaches the girl.

“Hi,” he says, “um, that’s-”

“Your dog?” she asks, grinning wryly, as Argos, who perked up at the sound of Bellamy’s voice, jumped out of her lap and is now running back and forth between the two of them like he genuinely can’t choose who he loves more in that moment.

“Yeah.” He ducks his head sheepishly and crouches down to clip Argos’s leash back onto his collar. “Sorry, he gets a little bit excited. About everything.”

“Oh that’s fine, he’s very cute. Aren’t you?” She scrunches her face at Argos and scratches at his neck. He licks her cheek eagerly in response.

“Argos!” Bellamy chastises, in the firm voice he uses to attempt, fruitlessly, to train the dog. Argos ignores him.

“I’m Clarke, by the way,” she says, looking up at Bellamy. She smiles and his heart stutters and he might have a thing for cute blonde girls who like his dog.

“Bellamy,” he responds with a smile.

They see her in the park a lot after that. She’s an artist, as it turns out, and she goes to the park to sketch a lot. People-watching, and all that. It doesn’t take long for Argos (and Bellamy) to find out which spots she frequents. He’s not stalking her. His dog likes her, it’s not his fault.

“So why Argos?” she asks one day, as they’re sitting on the grass together, throwing a tennis ball for the dog. Bellamy looks at her quizzically, and she shrugs. “The name. Why did you pick Argos?” Bellamy blushes and looks away, and Clarke grins wickedly. “Tell me!”

“My sister wouldn’t let me name him Cerberus,” he admits grudgingly. Clarke looks equal parts amused and baffled, and he explains, “Argos was Odysseus’ dog.”

Clarke laughs. “So, instead of thinking, ‘Hm, maybe this is a sign that I am a giant nerd and should give my dog a normal dog name like Rufus or Shadow’ you went nerd-hipster and picked an _obscure_  mythological dog.”

“It was that or Barkus Aurelius,” he says, shrugging casually. He passed the point where she could still think he was cool a long time ago, he might as well own it.

“I’m going to be embarrassed on your behalf since you are clearly too far down the dork rabbithole to do it yourself.”

“Nerdy is the new cool, Clarke. Get with the times.” She shoves his shoulder and Argos runs up to them and drops the ball in his lap.

Octavia sees straight through him, of course, because she’s his sister and it’s her job to make him feel pathetic and embarrassing.

“Just so you know, dog slobber doesn’t exactly say ‘I never learned how to talk to girls but I like you please go out with me,’” she says one night, perched at his kitchen counter and scrolling lazily through pinterest while he cooks.

“Really? Damn. That explains a lot of awkward dates, then,” he says dryly, poking at the stew with a wooden spoon.

“Shut up,” she responds without heat, reaching down to scratch her own dog, Trixie, behind the ears. Trixie, of course, is impeccably trained, and despite her beggy-eyes does not move from Octavia’s side to go get underfoot in the kitchen and whine for scraps the way Argos does.

“Besides, I know how to talk to girls,” Bellamy says defensively. “I get laid.”

“First of all, gross, I never want to hear about your sex life. Second of all, picking up girls in seedy dive bars for a one night stand is an _entirely_  different game from getting a girl to actually go out with you on real dates like an adult. Not that you would know, since you clearly have no idea what to do with a girl you _like-like_.” She takes on a juvenile, teasing tone, and he rolls his eyes.

“Oh, I know what to do,” he says, smirking, “but you don’t wanna hear about it, remember?”

Octavia makes a face. “Double gross. That’s not romantic at all. Good luck wooing this chick with dog slobber and ineptitude.”

“What, you’re not going to help me? I thought that’s why you brought it up.”

“And miss out on the entertainment of watching you completely fail at dealing with real romantic feelings? No way.”

As if just to prove him wrong, his sister gets a boyfriend about two weeks later, and sends him a text after their third date that says, _do u see how easy this is. it has been months how are u continuing to fail._

 _I have a plan,_ he replies. _The long con requires commitment. Patience._

_ur a disappointment_

_Love you too_

He likes to think he has a plan, of course. He’s going to make it happen somehow. His crush is very real and he is _going_  to do something about it, he just hasn’t figured out what that something is yet. He’s a romantic, it has to be perfect.

The answer comes to him one day in the park, when he gets there before her. He’s laying in the sun with Argos sleeping on top of him when he sees her walking up the path and he tugs on the dog’s ear to wake him up.

“Clarke’s here, go say hi,” he says in the baby-voice reserved for Argos. Immediately the dog jumps up and runs over to her, grabbing his tennis ball off the ground next to Bellamy and stepping all over his stomach on the way. Clarke stops and crouches to greet him and he wiggles excitedly like he’s never been more thrilled to see anyone in his life. Bellamy can empathize.

He hatches his plan that night, and makes sure to get to the park early the next day. When he sees Clarke walking up the path, he pulls out a sheet of rolled-up paper and ties it to Argos’ neck before patting his head and telling him to go say hi to Clarke. He takes off immediately, and Bellamy follows behind at a walk, trying to tame the nervous flutter in his stomach. He’s cool. He can do cool.

Clarke notices the paper when he’s halfway there, and she frowns in confusion as she pulls it off and unrolls it, then her face breaks into a wide grin as she reads, and Bellamy’s internal sigh of relief is enormous.

“This was creative,” she says when he gets to her. “I’ve never been asked out by dog before.”

Bellamy shrugs. “He’s braver than I am, I figured I’d use it to my advantage. Is that a yes?”

“Absolutely.” She puts her hand on his shoulder and pulls him down into a kiss. Bellamy doesn’t like to be cheesy, but it’s a little magical. After a minute, Argos gets impatient and whines up at them, scratching at Bellamy’s leg. Without breaking the kiss, Bellamy pulls a tennis ball from his pocket and chucks it away from them. Clarke laughs against his lips and he _definitely_  has a thing for cute blonde girls who like his dog.

\---

They’ve been together for about two and a half years when Clarke gets her first real, steady gig illustrating textbooks. Bellamy is thrilled when she tells him, because he’s a nerd, and he tells her to make sure that they let her do at least one Latin textbook. For him. She laughs, but agrees, because she’s excited about this job.

It only takes about a month for her excitement to disappear.

As it turns out, illustrating textbooks doesn’t allow for much creativity. Nothing she does is ever really good enough for them, they’re always picking on her art. It seems like they _want_  it to look bad, because if it’s too nice-looking they say it’s distracting. She’s always missing the mark, and even though she’s gotten past most of her childhood-perfectionist fear of disappointing people, she still feels like she’s gotten called into the principal’s office every time they criticize her art.

Bellamy’s told her she should quit if it makes her so miserable, that they’ll be more than fine on his salary and whatever she can make from freelance work, but… she’s always been independent, she doesn’t want to live off her boyfriend’s paycheck, even if they are living together. It feels childish to throw in the towel on good money just because her bosses hurt her ego a lot. Bellamy disagrees, wholeheartedly, but he knows that he can’t force her to do anything, and she already knows his opinion, so pressing the issue is useless.

But that doesn’t mean he can’t try to make her feel better in other ways.

His mother was a seamstress, and she taught him how to hold his own with a needle and thread, so it’s no big thing to buy a baby-sized Batman costume and adjust it to fit a dog, cowl and all. The hard part is teaching the perennially untrained Argos to sit up on his hind legs and look happy. He’s a smart dog, though, and as soon as Bellamy says it’s for Clarke, his doggy ears perk up and he gets a lot more receptive. Bellamy tries not to let it get to him.

Clarke is one of those people who texts throughout the day, so he usually can tell by the time he gets home how her day has gone, and one particular Tuesday seems to suck extra hard, so he rushes home after school and cajoles Argos into the bat-dog costume, then realizes he was supposed to go buy groceries and makes a run to the store.

When he gets back, he finds her sitting on the floor in the entryway, hugging Argos and crying. The dog looks helplessly up at him, whining and licking at her face in his best approximation of human comfort.

“Hey,” Bellamy says softly, sitting down next to her. “What’s wrong?”

She lifts her head to look at him and smiles a watery smile, then lets go of Argos and wraps her arms around Bellamy’s neck instead. “Today just really really sucked and the dog was too fucking cute and I got overwhelmed.”

“It was supposed to cheer you up, not make you cry,” he says dryly, rubbing comforting circles into her back.

“Mmm, they’re good tears though.”

“Good, it took me forever to teach him how to sit up like that. He wouldn’t listen till I told him it was for you. I think he likes you better.”

She laughs and kisses him on the cheek. “That’s okay, I love both of you equally.”

“Great,” he replies sarcastically, “I’m on par with the dog.” But he’s smiling as he presses his forehead to hers and kisses her softly. “I love you, too.”

The smile she gives him is brilliant.

\---

If there’s one thing Clarke loves, above all else, it’s Christmas. She gets excited for the holidays in a way that’s almost terrifying- every year it seems like he wakes up the day after Thanksgiving and the whole apartment is already decked top-to-bottom, fully festooned in festive frills, fa-la-la-la-la. He doesn’t know when she does it, because he’d swear she was there when he went to bed, but by the time he heads to the kitchen in the morning, way earlier than she’s usually even awake, she’s already there humming carols and giving him a cup of gingerbread-flavored coffee and a kiss on the cheek.

Clarke _loves_  Christmas.

Bellamy, meanwhile, doesn’t think so warmly of the holiday. He and his sister grew up dirt-poor, so they never really had Christmas, and there was a lot of childhood bitterness over the fact that all his friends got cool toys and movies and gadgets and it seemed like all he ever got from Santa was a big fuck-you. Becoming a teacher didn’t help that sentiment, because winter exams are usually the wake-up call that makes his kids study harder second semester. Meaning, more often than not, they’re running low on attention span by December, and they bomb the mid-year exam. Second semester is better, because the grades they get from first semester seem to make them realize that Latin isn’t as much of a blow-off as they originally thought, but teaching at the end of the semester is never the best time. He’s a bit Scroogey.

This year is worst than most, because he stays late to get the last of the grading done after releasing the last final with well-wishes for the holidays and a good-natured warning to stay out of trouble, and his sister calls in the middle of one of his last essays with some sort of urgent tree crisis she needs his help resolving, because Lincoln is out of town and it’s a two-person job, and that turns into him helping her hang decorations until it’s too dark to see. She sends him off with a plateful of peppermint fudge, and he’s ready to complain at Clarke over dinner and go to bed early by the time he gets home. Neither his girlfriend nor his dog come running to greet him at the door, though, so he wanders into the living room and finds them both passed out on the couch wearing matching Santa hats.

Suddenly, all the frustration of the day evaporates as his chest fills up with a warm, expansive joy. He leans over the back of the couch and kisses Clarke on the cheek. She yawns, and the drowsy smile she gives him makes him feel light and fluttery like a teenager in love. Argos lifts his head sleepily and snuffles at Bellamy.

“Merry Christmas,” Bellamy says, wrapping his arms around her as best he can.

She kisses his temple. “Merry Christmas, Bellamy.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [tumblr](http://www.thejgatsbykid.tumblr.com)!


End file.
